[Dovecot] Re: mailbox corruption

[Wietse Venema]

Yannick Majoros:
> Hello,
> 
>  Here is the description of a problem we habe been having for some time. 
> Originally posted on the postfix-users mailing list, but no solution 
> found to date.
> 
> >>>> We have been having problems with our mail system for a couple of
> >>>> months. Every now and then, some mailboxes get corrupted: a
> >>>> half-truncated message, usually without headers, is at the beginning
> >>>> of the mailbox, causing it to become unaccessible.
> >>>>
> >>>> For information, we use:
> >>>>
> >>>> - fedora core 4
> >>>> - postfix-2.2.2-2 rpm
> >>>> - dovecot-0.99.14-4.fc4 rpm
> >>>> - mailscanner-4.36.4-1 rpm
...
> >
> Ok, I removed MailScanner and I still have the very same problem. 
> Locking _does_ work for postfix and dovecot (discussed with Wietse, 
> partly by mail).
> 
> Any idea? As an alternative, is there a way of handling the problem 
> better? Dovecot just locks on these corrupt mailboxes :-/ I didn't try 
> Dovecot 1.0, as it is alpha and I don't have any package for that anyway 
> (production system :-/ ).

What else is accessing the mailbox files? Any scripts running around
that access mail without proper file locking, like scripts that
replicate mail to another box? 

Whay file system is being used?

If you can't figure out which is broken, then you'll have to use
maildir files.

	Wietse